The Road Trip From Hell
by Juanita Dark
Summary: "Road trips, bad. Next time I'm staying at home."


Title: The Road Trip from Hell 

Author: Juanita Dark  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Spoilers: Charmed S5, post-Oh My Goddess Parts 1 & 2  
  
Summary: "Road trips, bad. Next time I'm staying at home."  
  
Disclaimer: _Charmed_ is the creation of Constance M. Burge and the property of Aaron Spelling & Co. No profit tended and likewise, no infringement intended. 

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The Road Trip from Hell

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Three times dark, first in the mind.   
Second on Java Street, the dead car there. 

    City of Motors ~ Soul Coughing

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"Phoebe, this is stupid - he is not just going to let us leave the house. Should we even be leaving the house?"

Strapping her nephew, Wyatt, into the baby chair in the backseat, Phoebe dismissed Piper's concerns with a wave of the hand.

"He is not going to mind, Piper - and who is going to argue with a well-deserved break?"

Piper folded her arms, archly: "Really? You want me to write that list?"

"I think what Phoebe is trying to say," rejoined Paige, who had settled into the front passenger seat. " Is _carpe diem_. There will never be a good time for three sisters to hit the road."

"Well roads have a funny way of hitting back when Phoebe's behind the wheel," Piper grouched.

Phoebe, who had been arranging and re-arranging the bags in the boot of the car with to little effect save theatrical, finally replaced the last bag, slotting it in like the last piece of a very frustrating jig-saw puzzle. Slamming the boot down, she pointed at Piper - who still seemed reluctant to commit herself by actually getting into the car.

"You," she observed, "are starting to sound just like Prue." And with that she ushered Piper into the back passenger seat with her son - closing the door behind them.

"Well her car insurance wasn't through the roof, missy," Piper replied softly, just as gently shifting Wyatt into what she judged to be a more comfortable position. Not yet a year old and throning in his chair, Wyatt blinked back at her, unruffled by his mother's apparent discomfort.

At the front, Phoebe slipped into the driver's seat, and continued the debate - not for a moment conceding Piper's point: "Piper, you need to live just a little." She brought her thumb and index finger close together to demonstrate just how small the distance was between a relatively relaxed Piper and what she and Paige were now experiencing.

"Actually," Piper shifted her hair defensively. "I like to live - _a lot_. Which is part of my whole road trip problem; as witches we are at our strongest _in the house_."

Phoebe exchanged a look with Paige before turning the key in the ignition. Both understood the need to stay together under one roof but appreciated this neither precluded having a life or at least attempting a road trip. Slowly Phoebe started backing the car out of the Halliwell driveway adding, while glancing over Piper's shoulder:

"Trust me Piper, you'll thank me later."

Unsubdued, Piper shot back with characteristic pragmatism: "When? In my next life?"

Phoebe opened her mouth to form a reply and found that in the second she'd taken to consider a response, Chris had suddenly appeared in her rear view mirror - standing directly behind the car, blocking it's reverse. Phoebe braked abruptly. In the back, Piper, hemmed in by her seat belt, clutched at her chest before looking over to check on Wyatt (who, though seemingly amused, had nonetheless activated around him the strange protective magical field that was congenitally his).

Piper glowered at her designated driver. "Phoebe," she warned, heavily weighting both syllables.

Mimicking, Phoebe did the same only mining a call for calm through her wording: "Piper."

Paige, who had been observing the cool advance of their new whitelighter from the back of the car around to Phoebe's window, reminded them both: "Chr-is."

Still hampered by her seat belt, Piper, turned in her seat. She had missed entirely the reason for the car's braking in her concern that it might have jolted or otherwise disturbed Wyatt. Noticing Chris for the first time, she squared herself in her seat, again aiming her comments at Phoebe: "You were saying?" 

Phoebe glanced at Paige, who simply shrugged before recapping the obvious: "I'd say we've been busted." 

"Will everyone just lighten up," Phoebe insisted. Applying the hand brake, she kept one hand against the wheel as she rolled down her window with her other. Paige was amused to see that she was psyching herself into a fully animated charm offensive.

Chris rested a closed hand against Phoebe's door, slightly leaning into the car. His smile was just as slight: "Hello..." Clearly struck for a continuing moniker for a small family inadvisably fleeing their home for the open road he settled for: "Ladies."

To Paige the term made him seem incongruently older, when he was clearly outnumbered by an elderhood of three. Glancing in the rear view mirror Paige could see Piper slightly bristle at the suggestion that they were fledglings under Chris' expedience. On some level, she felt the same. There was a vague but lingering sense of intrusion that the introduction of Chris' had come at the expense of Piper's husband, Leo - who was now "gallivanting in the heavenly domain", as Phoebe had put it in one of her more unloving moments. 

The swipe in question had come on the tail-end of Phoebe's new frustrations about exactly what Leo had done to Piper in said "heavenly domain" to make her so acquiescent to what was really no small change. It was, of course followed by a rational guilt which Paige knew Phoebe felt but rarely admitted to having: "I mean, who knows how many Elders and other beings were slaughtered before we were able to stop the Titans? It just feels..." Paige had finished for her: "Weird."

There had been an awkward silence of mutual agreement.

"Chris! Hey, we were just talking about you." 

Phoebe's opening conversational gambit brought Paige back to the present.

"So you were planning on inviting me along once you'd reversed out of the driveway?"

Paige wondered if Phoebe would take that answer as the sarcasm it undoubtedly sounded like. Instead, Phoebe glanced at Piper's doubtful expression and bluffed as best as she could:

"Oh, of course." 

Phoebe said this with the air of someone who had just forgotten a shopping list and was returning to the house to retrieve it. Paige, raised an eyebrow, she was beginning to see the practical advantages of acting the ditz. Chris, however, was either one step ahead of all of them or used to the act in question.

"In which case," he said, opening the door next to Piper - who informed him: "Other side," in short order, forcing him to walk around the back of the car and use the other door. Settling into what was clearly now his seat in the proceedings. He continued: "You won't mind me coming along."

Phoebe tried to ward off the sidelong glares from Piper and Paige - an unspoken 'I told you so' and 'no **men**' respectively - unsuccessfully. Instead she double-bluffed: "Totally! The more, the merrier."

"Then we're all set then," Chris replied cheerfully.

Next to him Piper gave an uneasy smile:

"I'd buckle up if I were you, I don't care how dead you are already."

"Hey," Phoebe commented eying both in the rear view mirror. "I'm a licensed driver - a little optimism please!"

To which Chris snapped his buckle in place with a loud click.

Paige, suddenly curious of the outcome to such an obviously unhappy combination of witch and whitelighter, was at the least hopeful: "Okay, I guess that means _now_ we're all set."

Piper, holding the edge of Wyatt's chair quietly began to chide herself under her breath.

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End file.
